The Ubuntu Dialogues: Revisit. Rethink. Reimagine conference kicked off at Stellenbosch University yesterday against the backdrop of a new art exhibition which highlighted slavery and its dehumanizing effects on people captured in the slave trade.

Showcased at the Stellenbosch University Museum, the exhibition titled; Fugitives, and The Runaways, features the artwork of two Ubuntu Dialogues Student Fellows, Pearl Mamathuba (2021) and Lillian Young (2019).

New Art exhibition restores slaves personhood

VIZ.LAB's Kathryn Smith and Pearl Mamathuba's, Fugitives is an ongoing series of paired digital facial composites and graphic text panels depicting persons who escaped forms of servitude in the Cape Colony in the period just prior and soon after freedom (1 December, 1838). 

Slave fugitives are referenced In the archives of two journals, De Zuid-Afrikaan and the Government Gazette, where slave owners and masters advertised for the recapture of fugitive slaves. The monetary rewards given and the constant fear of criminal prosecution for anyone harbouring the fugitives highlighted the objectification and property status of slaves. Fugitives is a collaboration with Karl Bergemann, PhD candidate in History, Stellenbosch University, as part of the LEAP digital humanities project, Biography of an Uncharted People.

Pearl Mamathuba has a background in forensic art with the South African Police Service and she explained that forensic skills were applied in the creation of the work in order to “to re-imagine what they would actually look like and trying to perceive a sense of restoring personhood to these runaways, which is why they seem like they sit for their portraits and they stare back at you."

Wanted: Runaways, from the series The Problem with Archives: A Portrait is Worth our Word by Lillian Young confronts the limited scope of historical archives to truly represent the lived experience of individuals living under oppression. Young examines the history of slavery in the United States in this work. While only a selection of portraits are featured here, the work is continuous – as an intentional reminder that confronting difficult histories is an ongoing process.

Lillian Young explains: “I was so chuffed that our projects are so similar … it was really cool to see it from a different perspective and see how it affected not just America but  how it affected people in Africa …so it's really interesting to see the juxtaposition and I was looking at the advertisements and the format of how these are written are so similar that it's scary and it makes you think about the formulaic process of enslavement…"

Ubuntu: A shared humanity

Ubuntu Dialogues: Revisit. Rethink. Reimagine, is the first of two conferences that will conclude the current phase of the Ubuntu Dialogues Project. The second conference will be hosted by Michigan State University in September 2023.

The Ubuntu Dialogues Project began in 2019 as a collaboration between Stellenbosch University (SU) and Michigan State University (MSU) with a commitment to a cross-continental conversation to reimagine  Ubuntu and dialogic practice.

The central question that guided the conversation was what dialogue – in the face of complex situations -  would feel like when based on a shared humanity instead of differences.

The Ubuntu Dialogues Revisit. Rethink. Reimagine conference will run from Monday, 24 October to Friday 28 October. The conference brings students and academics together along with new scholarly voices and practitioners working in the fields of museums, archives, and conversational spaces to reflect on what they have learned about Ubuntu and dialogue, what they are still struggling with, and what promise dialogue and Ubuntu holds for the future.

Members of the public can join the conference sessions in person at the Faculty of Theology, 171 Dorp Street, Stellenbosch, or they could register for online participation through the following link: https://maties.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9WZStFi7R9aILHyKBqnThA